“Are You a Boy or a Girl?”

Promoters of the Transgender Movement

Many of us who grew up in the seventies remember a cross-dressing corporal Klinger on the hit show M.A.S.H. played by Jamie Farr. Farr’s character on the show behaved this way, not because he was confused about his gender identity, but because he was hoping to be discharged from the Army on a section eight. Today, this character would be considered normal and perhaps even a hero. Why the change and who are these change agents who are promoting transgenderism as proper behavior?

• Popularized Social Gender Norms

Some of the confusion about gender identity in our culture arises because of strict gender norms. Boys will like blue and girls must wear pink. In the past the ideas were that girls could not be surgeons and boys could not be nurses. Who made these rules? Are these genuine signs and proof of gender? What are the real traits of masculinity and femininity? The Bible does not discuss culturally stereotypical gender roles. Many so-called “tomboys” have turned out to be a worthy woman as a wife and mother. Being able to put in electrical switches and do wood work does not make her any more of a man or less of a woman. Popular social gender norms based on human traditions are not the standard.

• Problematic Parenting

A two year old girl starts playing with toy cars and trucks. She likes pink instead of blue. At three she loves to spend time in the garage with her father while he works on the car or with her grandfather doing carpentry in the backyard. The postmodern world claims she was really born a boy and trapped in a girl’s body. So the parents give her a little boy hair cut and start dressing her like a boy. One thing is for sure the parents are actively at this point trying to turn their daughter into a son. The Bible gives this hope (which can also be a warning): “train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). This is not a case of “nature” but one of “nurture.” In the illustration it is a case of problematic parenting. Parents are not raising their children in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4), but blindly following the popularized social gender norms. Other parenting problems which can have an adverse effect on children and their gender identification are broken homes and mothers who are domineering and overbearing and fathers who are effeminate or delinquent.

• Postmodernism’s Political Agenda

The parents have a young daughter they are trying to help transition into a boy because they found her playing one day with a set of toy power tools. The press is alerted and the liberal media has a new set of star parents to promote their anti-Creator agenda. Even a United States President has jumped on board. Target has opened its restrooms to transgenders and the showers are free to be used by transgenders at Planet Fitness.

• Psychological Disorders

Although it is no longer viewed as politically correct, transgenderism has been considered a psychological disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, Text Revision or DSM-IV-TR. Gender Identity Disorder (GID), or gender dysphoria which are the technical terms used in the medical field. It is when an individual desires to change one’s gender or take on an opposite gender role. Psychologist used to treat patients suffering from acute anxieties over their confusion about gender identity. Back in 2010 France was the first nation to cease recognizing GID as a mental disease. So if someone feels like they are not a boy, but a hamster and insist on eating and living like one and furthermore refuses to talk, what should mom and dad do? Should they take them to a specialist or to the vet? Perhaps, they might want to be a good parent and assist their son into transitioning into a hamster. After all, he is “trapped” in the wrong body.

• Physical Mutations and Diseases

Some proponents of transgenderism point out that there is physiological proof of various gender identities. However, medical science has long known about these problems caused by hormone imbalances or birth defects. A mutation or a physical abnormality is not proof of transgenderism any more than a boy born with twenty-four digits is not a human but an alien. Or that a girl born without ears is a crocodile. Veterinarians do not have a problem telling if a dog is male, even if it does squat instead of hike it’s leg to “go to the bathroom.”

It has been pointed out that some babies are born with variants in the twenty-third pair of chromosomes which determine the gender or sex of a child. Normally a girl has an XX and a male has XY as their twenty-third chromosome pair. There are several other not so common combinations of the sex chromosome, such as, X known as Turner’s syndrome, Klinefelter’s syndrome (XXY), and other syndromes like XYY, XXYY, XXX, XXXX, and even XXXXX. Although these mutations may present physiological problems, the fact remains, if there is a Y chromosome provided by the father, the baby is always a male. If a child has no Y chromosomes but only X’s, it is always a girl. You might ask why about the Y chromosome. Because only the father can provide the Y at conception. Today, many post-modernists want to pick and choose what science they will accept and what science it will reject.

• Physicians Playing God

In the past gender assignment was done by medial staff when a child was born. There were birth defects which confused the doctors. To deal with this the 1950 Hopkins model was used to determine gender assignment and a “sex-assignment” operation. Instead of waiting to check chromosomes or the ancient wait and see method, these physicians impatiently played God by taking matters into their own surgical hands. Still it is God who makes male and female humans. “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;’ So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:26-27). Furthermore, “for God is not the author of confusion but of peace” (1 Cor. 14:33). The problem with confusion over gender is not God’s failure as a creator who had made everything “very good” (Gen. 1;31). Man in his sin and ignorance has created the confusion. If one just goes by appearance it would seem that the spotted hyenas are all male and at first glance it would appear that dolphins, alligators and crocodiles are all female. Biology has learned to tell the difference by closer observation. However, great care must be taken when checking the gender of either an alligator or a crocodile. Perhaps, we need to heed the warning of Jesus in this matter: “do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment” (John 7:24).

– Daniel R. Vess